Performance-Based Curriculum for Mathematics
This book provides a model for taking instruction from the traditional focus on content to a student-centered focus that aligns selected content with quality and context. The organization and alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment is based on practical classroom application. Numerous examples of performance-based mathematics are set in real-life contexts. Performance benchmarks are set for grades 3, 5, 8, and 12, which can be used as guides for customizing instruction. The four sections of the book are: (1) Introduction to Performance-Based Curriculum (a question and answer format); (2) Content/Concept Standards and Performance Benchmarks (organized by major strands including Number Sense and Estimation, Numeration Systems, Patterns, Relationships, and Functions, Geometry and Spatial Sense, Measurement, Probability and Statistics, and Algebraic Concepts and Operations); (3) Technology Connections (strategies for students to use technology, i.e. computers, to access, interpret, produce, disseminate, and evaluate information); and (4) Performance Designers (a planning tool for teachers to design lessons specifically addressing learning actions). Based upon the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards, the framework for a mathematics curriculum includes real-world applications and multiple problem-solving strategies, the purpose of which is to help students learn how to show what they know. Contains 30 references. (AIM)